If John Kerry Beat George W Bush

Do you remember John Kerry? He is still working in politics, mostly on climate initiatives on behalf of the Biden administration. Many Americans may have forgotten about John Kerry, but he was an important political figure in the 2000s. He was the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in the 2004 Presidential Election. He lost to George W Bush. What if John Kerry had beaten George W Bush in 2004?

It should be remembered that John Kerry’s loss in 2004 was extremely close. While he lost the popular vote by 3 million, Kerry was one state from winning the election, Ohio. Kerry lost Ohio by 180,000 votes. That means that if just under 100,000 votes in the state had switched, John Kerry would have won. John Kerry winning the 2004 Presidential Election would have caused quite a bit of changes to the timeline of events and Presidents.

While many speculate that the US would not have gone into Iraq had Al Gore beat George W Bush in 2000, a Kerry victory in 2004 wouldn’t have changed Middle East policy that much. Things might have been tweaked around the edges, but the US was already committed by 2004. The bigger changes would have been on the Supreme Court and the timeline of Presidents from there.

George W Bush appointed 2 Supreme Court Justices during his second term. One of them is the current Chief Justice, John Roberts. Had John Kerry won in 2004, he would have been the one replacing the justices. It is possible that the conservative retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor might have tried to hold out to wait for a Republican to win in 2008. But it is difficult to speculate, so I will go with the Supreme Court Justices who retired in our timeline also retiring under Kerry.

I am also assuming the makeup of the House and Senate are the same, with only a Kerry rather than Bush Presidency. I am assuming the most minimal change in the 2004 election, meaning instead of a very narrow Bush win, we see a very narrow Kerry win, in which Bush wins the popular vote. In the timeline, Republicans control the House and Senate from the beginning of Kerry’s administration.

The 2006 midterms were bound to be bad for the party with control of the White House. So I assume the GOP improves their majorities in the House and Senate. This means that for the entirety of Kerry’s term, the GOP controls the House and Senate. This means that the GOP can theoretically block Kerry’s Supreme Court appointees.

While things were quite partisan even in the 2000s, they were not nearly as partisan as they are now. Through the 2000s, Republican and Democratic Presidents both got sizable amount of votes from members of the other party for their Supreme Court nominees. For that reason, I will assume Kerry gets two center left appointees in the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice.

This is a huge change in the makeup of the Supreme Court. After Bush’s Presidency, the makeup of the Supreme Court was 5 appointed by Republicans and 4 appointed by Democrats. If Kerry appoints two that Bush appointed in our timeline, it would have been 6 Justices appointed by Democrats, including the Chief Justice, to 3 appointed by Republicans.

Now, to bring things into context, I will quickly say that I think whichever party won the 2004 Election was going to lose the 2008 Election. The winner of the 2004 Election would be the incumbent party during the Great Recession and an unpopular war. For that reason, I assume a Republican wins in 2008, and appoints 2 Supreme Court Justices in place of Barack Obama’s in our timeline. That would lead to a 5-4 Republican appointed majority by 2012. So it’s not like there would have been a 6-3 liberal majority for very long had Kerry won in 2004

Now let’s go to what the order of recent Presidents would be had Kerry won in 2004. Like I said, I think if Kerry won in 2004, a Republican wins in 2008. I’m not sure if it is John McCain or Mitt Romney. In our timeline, John McCain was the 2008 GOP nominee. But it is possible that Mitt Romney could have been the nominee, as a younger, fresher candidate. And one who could be a better contrast to Kerry.

We should also mention that late 2008 was when the John Edwards cheating scandal broke out. In 2004, Edwards was Kerry’s running mate. Either Edwards would be embroiled in the scandal during the election, or would be dropped. No matter what, it would be a mess for the Democrats, in addition to being incumbents during the Great Recession. It is hard to see Kerry winning a second term in 2008, even if he did some things better than Bush.

Either way, I assume a Kerry win in 2004 leads to a President Romney/McCain starting in 2008. In terms of Presidential timelines, the question is, who is the 2012 Democratic nominee, and does he or she beat McCain/Romney in 2012? Some argue that running in 2008 against an unpopular George Bush allowed Barack Obama to better contrast himself as a change agent. This gave more appeal to nominate him instead of favored Hillary Clinton.

In this timeline in 2012, Obama doesn’t have that clear contrast to run against. In our timeline under Obama, the economy was anemic. My guess is it would be similarly sluggish under McCain/Romney. But, like under Obama, the timeline under McCain/Romney in 2012 would be slightly better than 2008. It would make the incumbent look like he was making improvements.

This is tricky on both questions. On who would be the 2012 Democratic nominee, and who would win in 2012. My guess is that in this situation, Obama would have a better chance of winning in 2012 than Hillary Clinton. I propose two possibilities. One where Hillary Clinton wins the 2012 Democratic nomination but loses to McCain/Romney in 2012. Another where Barack Obama wins the 2012 Democratic nomination, but wins the 2012 election.

It is a tough call, but I will just go with Hillary Clinton winning the 2012 nomination and losing to McCain/Romney in 2012. Not that much changes in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy, besides tweaks. But I think that Barack Obama wins the 2016 Democratic nomination and wins the general election, after 8 years of Republicans in the White House. But who would be the 2016 Republican nominee?

As much of a force as Donald Trump is, and as much as his injection of populism into the GOP was long overdue, I do not think Trump would have been the 2016 GOP nominee in this circumstance. One of the things that allowed Trump to win was that there was no GOP heir apparent in 2016. The base also did not trust the establishment, as Bush was viewed as a poor President, and the establishment candidates, McCain and Romney, had both lost to Obama.

None of these factors would be the case in this timeline. McCain/Romney would have just won 2 terms. That presidency would have been more successful than Bush’s. And George W Bush’s presidency would not have been seen as being as bad as in our timeline. This was because Bush’s second term was much worse than his first. There’d be less energy for someone completely different from the GOP Establishment than in our timeline.

I would say that this even holds true in the circumstance where Clinton or Obama beat Romney/McCain in 2012. This circumstance would give Trump a bit of a better chance, but the GOP Establishment would not be viewed as poorly even in those circumstances as in our timeline. My guess is in this alternate timeline, McCain/Romney’s VP or another establishment Republican would have been the 2016 nominee, and lost to Obama.

It is possible that Trump might have had a chance in 2020 to be the nominee against incumbent Barack Obama, but I think 2016 was his starting moment. My guess is someone like Ted Cruz would have harnessed the growing populism to win the GOP nomination. Now, 2020 was a difficult year for the incumbent. There was the Covid pandemic, a lockdown that caused people to lose jobs, and social unrest.

These types of things play against the incumbent. But in our timeline, Trump nearly won the 2020 election even with those things. Now, regardless of what I think about Obama’s policies, I think Obama was more likely to win under these circumstance than Trump. While Obama was controversial too, he was not as controversial (with media helping him and all Democrats being a factor) as Trump.

Therefore, I believe that Barack Obama would have narrowly beaten Ted Cruz in the 2020 Presidential Election. Remember, in our timeline, Trump appointed 3 Supreme Court justices and Biden has appointed one. I don’t think Obama by 2023 would have appointed 4 Justices though. I think a couple of the conservative Supreme Court justices would have held on in hopes of a Republican winning in 2024.

A reminder: this is my timeline if John Kerry won in 2004. I have McCain/Romney winning in 2008 and 2012. By 2016, Obama would be coming in with a 5-4 conservative majority. I will assume that he replaces the two liberal justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That keeps the 4 liberals. Scalia died in 2016, and I think President Romney/McCain replace him with a conservative. Republicans are better at the politics of this.

I’m not sure if Anthony Kennedy retires under a Democrat. That is the question on whether as of today the Supreme Court is a 5-4 conservative or liberal majority. My guess is that either way, Roe v Wade is not overturned. A 5-4 liberal majority never overturns it. The only other possibility is the 5-4 conservative majority does. But that majority has Anthony Kennedy on it, who was less conservative than his replacement Brett Kavanaugh.

There are so many other possibilities and topics to explore. But doing so would make this article a novel. On the topics I did touch upon, there are some noticeable changes. According to my guess, if John Kerry had won in 2004, Donald Trump would never have become President. Mitt Romney or John McCain would have served two terms. Barack Obama would have been elected President in 2016. And Roe v Wade would not have been overturned.

In our timeline, the Presidents since the start of the 21st century are: George W Bush from 2001-2009, Barack Obama from 2009-2017, Donald Trump from 2017-2021, and Joe Biden from 2021-present day. In this alternate timeline, there are some changes. We have George W Bush 2001-2005. Then John Kerry 2005-2009. I will just arbitrarily pick one between Romney and McCain, Mitt Romney.

After Kerry’s one term we’d have Mitt Romney 2009-2017. And then finally we’d have Barack Obama 2017-present. I should note that I could easily see Obama or Hillary Clinton winning in 2012, but when forced to choose, I had Republicans winning re election in 2012 against Clinton. I should also note that my prediction might not show how different the timeline would actually be.

This is because I was trying to ground the prediction in some understanding of our reality. We might have had a Democratic President who was neither Obama or Hillary Clinton. But all in all, I feel like this alternate history is plausible. This just shows, again, how an ostensibly innocuous election can change the course of American history.